Journal
AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SOCIOLOGY
Volume 122, Issue 2, Pages 469-500Publisher
UNIV CHICAGO PRESS
DOI: 10.1086/687744
Keywords
-
Categories
Ask authors/readers for more resources
What factors best explain the U.S. growth in economic stratification since the late 1970s? This research tests the power resource hypothesis with a pooled time-series analysis of income inequality. In a departure from prior research, the explanatory power of both national-and state-level political accounts is evaluated. By analyzing tax statistics, the authors isolate the factors that produce the largest gap in U.S. income distributions. Findings indicate that increases in the political strength of neoliberal national administrations and skill-biased technical change (SBTC) are the most influential determinants-although the SBTC account became much less influential after the 1980s. Other accounts have considerable explanatory power, as the results show that inequality grew after decreases in manufacturing and expansions in minority populations. But these findings show that national-level neoliberal political determinants best explain the extraordinary increase in U.S. income inequality.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available